Dimitar Anakiev

Dimitar Anakiev (Dimitar Grigorov Anakiev) is an independent filmmaker, writer and poet, who was born in Belgrade in 1960. He completed his Faculty of Medicine at University of Niš in Niš, Serbia, in 1986 and worked seven years as a medical doctor. He resided in Slovenia, beginning in 1987, but shortly thereafter and without warning found himself among the victims of administrative ethnic cleansing ("Erased"), the result of secret illegal action enacted 26 February 1992 by the democratic Slovenian government one year after the disintegration of the state of Yugoslavia. For 10 years Anakiev was compelled to live without personal documents (such as passport or personal identification), rendering him an invisible prisoner of the Slovenian democracy. At this point he purchased a small video camera and began his film career, in an attempt to make himself and other marginal Balkan people visible. The success of his films (including winning the Slovenian national film award) has made it possible for Anakiev to continue filmmaking as a producer, director and writer. His company, Dimitar Anakiev Films s.p.-DAF (now Anakiev Production) specializes in socially engaged films of the Balkans in the post-communist era. Anakiev is a founding member of the Slovenian Director Guild, and a member of the Slovenian Filmmaker Association.

Dimitar Anakiev at Fukuoka Airport in 2007. Photo: Richard Gilbert

Selected films

Film awards

Tributes

“Destiny of the erased people is for Mr. Anakiev an individual and collective tragedy that should actually never happen. The ultimate purpose of the film is to eliminate reasons, that caused this film to be made.”[1]

- Dr. Nikolai Jeffs, critic, University of Ljubljana

“Although Mr Anakiev is telling the story through the personal stories, he manages to show the lives of the erased through many different dimension and therefore offers a holistic picture.”

- Nataša Posel, director, Amnesty International Slovenia[2]

“Mr. Anakiev is a compassionate artist who seeks to improve life for his subjects and bring attention to the neglected, and in this, he is a rare and vital talent... Anakiev is in possession of personal methodology of documentary filmmaking which will enable him to follow destinies of his heroes with different ethnic backgrounds but at the same time to present the realities in social, political and economic circumstances...”[3]

- Želimir Žilnik, Serbian film director

"As an erased person, Anakiev’s radical ethical act was to give up practicing medicine to become a film-maker. He helped educate a generation of Slovenians through powerful films that juxtaposed the actions of politicians and rightwing nationals with the day-to-day privations of erased people. His use of montage reflects Eisenstein’s revolutionary dialectics and, ironically, Anakiev’s film practices raise awareness of the brutal imperialism that is sometimes embedded in what we have come to think of as democracy."[4]

- Stuart C. Aitken, anthropologist, San Diego State University

Poetry and essays

Anakiev is also an internationally renowned haiku poet, editor and essayist.[5] Anakiev began writing haikus in 1985, and is considered the “grandfather“ of many Balkan haiku projects such as Haiku novine (Haiku Newspapers, Serbia 1993), Prijatelj (Slovenia 1996) and Apokalipsa haiku edition (1996 Slovenia). He is the co-founder of the World Haiku Association[6] with Jim Kacian and Ban'ya Natsuishi. One of the best known haikus by Anakiev was broadcast on BBC London in August 2000:

      Spring evening.
      The wheel of a troop carrier
      crushes a lizard.

Selected books

Literary awards

Editor (periodicals)

Editor (books)

E-novine

Anakiev is also regular contributor of E-novine (E-news), regional news portal in Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian-Monenegrian.[7]

Interviews

Dimitar Anakiev intervieved by Špela Raspotnik (“Kings of the Road” No.6/2006):

Video interview with Dimitar Anakiev by Igor Mašera (Slovenian, 2008)

Films online

References

  1. ↑ http://www.varuh-rs.si/index.php?id=973&L=6
  2. ↑ http://www.anakievproduction.com
  3. ↑ http://www.anakievproduction.com
  4. ↑ http://izbris-blog.blogspot.com/2015/01/revolutionary-film-making-from.html
  5. ↑ http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/poet-details/?IDclient=158
  6. ↑ World Haiku Association. "Who we are". Retrieved 23 March 2011.
  7. ↑ E-novine (26 February 2011). "Dimitar Anakiev". Retrieved 24 March 2011.

External links

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